After two years of wrestling with the very complicated listing and privacy features of Facebook, my prayers have been answered by a series of circles, lassoing my friends into digital pens. This week I have been playing with Google plus!

I have often shown staff at work how to separate their personal and professional lives on Facebook, creating lists and encouraging the use of the small padlock when status publishing. Plus simply makes the assumption that you will want to keep some updates separate from others and therefore gives you plenty of simple options before you post.

The open/close nature of Plus essentially blends together the exclusivity of Facebook, alongside the openness of twitter, allowing you to make interact with close friends, but at the same time keeping someone you met at a conference once at arms length, but drawn in closer again with just the tap of a button!

The big influx of Twitter users to Plus has meant that all followers have rejoined in this space, the spammers unfortunately having more than 140 characters to share their thoughts. It would be great to steal the hash-tagging functionality from Twitter, allowing users to discuss topics with strangers in real time and opening the network further. 

I’m impressed overall. There are some failings though. Plus has tried to add some sort of RSS type reader for topics that interest you. I soon discovered a feed for soccer provided very little; the American who set up this feed was happy to mix American football and soccer all in one big mix.